


Have Yourself a Purgatory Christmas

by burglebezzlement



Series: Wings over Purgatory [3]
Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Cooking, Cursed Object, Earp Homestead, F/F, Holiday fluff with curses in, Winter, dragon - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 13:04:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8891878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: The gang at the Homestead are spending their first Christmas together, and Waverly’s going to make it the best Christmas ever — food! Presents! Decorations! All their old ornaments on the tree!Too bad one of the decorations she found up in the attic of the Homestead is evil.Christmas fluff with a dragon and a curse. Part of the Wings Over Purgatory series, but can be read as a stand-alone.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Quick explanatory note: In the earlier chapters of this series, Nicole and Waverly found a dragon's egg. The egg hatched into River, a dragon who's telepathically bonded to Nicole. Also, Nicole's officially living at the Homestead. There, all caught up!

Waverly’s standing on the roof of the house when Nicole pulls in.

It’s a chilly afternoon, and she looks cold up there, in her plaid scarf and her knit wool headband that Gus made her.

“I’m decorating,” Waverly yells when Nicole goes to stand below the porch. When Nicole squints, she can see strands of lights haphazardly hung from the eaves of the house. “Can you plug me in?”

“Are you sure it’s safe?” Nicole yells back. The ladder’s at the edge of the house, and it looks unsteady.

“It’s fine!” 

Nicole shrugs and goes to look for the plug. It’s inside — Waverly’s run the extension cord through an old bullet hole that they patched up with foam caulking after one of the attacks on the Homestead. 

Nicole plugs the lights into one of the kitchen outlets, and then goes back out.

Waverly’s grinning down at her from a roof outlined in twinkling lights. “Doesn’t it look good?”

“It looks amazing,” Nicole says. She goes over to the edge of the house to hold the ladder while Waverly climbs down.

“I would have helped,” Nicole says, once Waverly’s on the ground. Not that she doesn’t know how useless it is, asking an Earp to hold back, to wait for help. But.

“I was fine,” Waverly says. She’s shivering from the cold, and Nicole puts her arm around her and steers her inside, into the warmth from the wood stove that they’ve been running constantly since it got really cold out. “I found the lights on sale, and I thought, why not? It’s just us here, but it’s nice.”

❄ ❄ ❄

Nicole thought about going home for Christmas — well, back to her family, anyway. The Homestead’s where she thinks of, now, when she thinks of home.

Nicole still hasn’t introduced Waverly to her parents, although they know she’s with someone. They could both have gone to visit.

But then the Sheriff’s office’s work schedule came out. Nicole gets Christmas Day off, but she’s working all day Christmas Eve, which she’s dreading. And then there’s River — Waverly can care for her, but they haven’t tested how far the dragon’s telepathic bond with Nicole can stretch. 

And Nicole doesn’t want to leave them alone at Christmas. Any of them.

❄ ❄ ❄

Waverly’s found a scrubby pine tree, which stands in the corner of the living room, opposite from the stove, in front of the old barn slider door. It’s hung with more lights, with garlands of strung beads and with hand-made ornaments that look like they were made by several enthusiastic grade school classrooms.

Calamity Jane is underneath the tree, batting at a stuffed bird hanging from one of the lower branches like she’s a kitten.

“I filled that one with catnip,” Waverly says. She hands Nicole a steaming mug of tea and leans in. Nicole smiles and kisses her.

“I made one for River, too,” Waverly says, a few minutes later. She breaks away and goes to get something from the tree.

It’s a picture of River, from after she first hatched, her tiny wings still black and furled. Waverly put it into a Baby’s First Christmas ornament, only she crossed out _Baby_ and wrote _Dragon_ in with a Sharpie.

“It’s perfect,” Nicole says. Her amusement must have made River curious, because the dragon sends a vague sense of questioning over their bond. Nicole sends back an image of Waverly, smiling, in front of the tree.

“It’s going to be the best Earp Christmas ever,” Waverly says. Like she’s determined to make it happen.

❄ ❄ ❄

Wynonna gets back late, like she usually does.

“What the hell happened in here?” she asks. She’s got her bottle of bourbon, but she lets it rest on the end table while she takes in all the boxes on the floor.

“We dug out the old Christmas stuff,” Waverly says, cheerfully. “I found all our old Christmas ornaments from when we were kids!” 

Nicole smiles at Waverly saying they had both dug up the Christmas stuff, but she doesn’t say anything. She figures Wynonna knows Waverly’s the only one who’d pull all this stuff out from the Homestead’s attic. And the only one who’d go through all of it.

Nicole found the ornaments Waverly left off the tree, too. There’s a box filled with a bunch of old handmade ornaments, kid-made. There’s several origami ornaments — no swans, but there’s a couple cranes and a frog and a pig with wings that’s actually pretty impressive. Nicole knows, without asking, that Willa made the ornaments in that box, and that Waverly separated them all out from the ones Wynonna and Waverly made. That she’s saving them, because maybe there’ll be a time when they want to remember Willa.

But that time isn’t now. They’re still not talking about it, even now, a year later. Wynonna scans over the ornaments on the tree, and she must see that some are missing, but she doesn’t say anything about it.

Instead, she sits down on the couch, also known as her bed. “It looks good,” she says, gruffly.

“I know,” Waverly says. “Actually? Make that amazing. I am a Christmas Ninja.”

“Amazing,” Wynonna agrees. She takes a sip of bourbon.

Waverly grins again, and goes back to sorting through the boxes.

It’s a mixed assortment. There’s a few cardboard boxes, like the one Waverly sorted all of Willa’s ornaments into, and wooden crates with faded paper labels, and smaller pasteboard boxes. Some of them are water-stained, where the Homestead’s roof couldn’t keep out the leaks during the time when the Earps were gone.

Waverly cuts the string around one of the pasteboard boxes and starts pulling figurines out of fluffy wood shavings. “Look at these,” she says, setting them up on the floor.

“I don’t remember those,” Wynonna says.

“It’s a creche!” Waverly rescues one of the Wise Men from Calamity Jane and carries the figures over to the kitchen table. “Isn’t it nice? I wonder why it never got set up when we were kids.”

“Daddy never really went for decorating,” Wynonna says, and the way Waverly goes quiet tells Nicole that there’s a whole story there.

“I think this is pretty sweet,” Waverly says, eventually, once she’s got the whole Nativity scene set up in the center of the table. The figurines are hand-carved, and while the paint’s faded and chipped, Nicole can still see the gentle expression on the face of Mary, and the curls of wool on the sheep.

❄ ❄ ❄

That night, Nicole dreams that she is very small. In her dream, a star crashes into the Homestead, and a bright light flashes through the kitchen before Calamity Jane’s enormous paw bats tiny dream-Nicole off the table.

Waverly’s still asleep when Nicole wakes up, although she’s tossing a bit, and Nicole hears her mumble something under her breath about liver. Nicole thinks about waking her up, but then she quiets down and pulls a pillow towards her chest, clutching it convulsively. 

It’s cold in their room. From past experience, Nicole knows that someone needs to get the woodstove going or Waverly’s going to wake up. She gets up quietly and shuts the bedroom door behind her. 

Wynonna’s crouched down in front of the stove already, glaring at the wood and crumpled paper like she can make it spontaneously combust if she just stares at it hard enough. Nicole watches her for a moment, and then heads into the kitchen to start the coffee.

Once the coffee maker’s going, Nicole pulls on her warmest coat and a squashy purple hat that Waverly made for her, and grabs some liver from the refrigerator.

River’s in her dragon lean-to, the one they built on the side of the barn with help from Doc and hindrance from Wynonna. It’s not fancy, but it’s big enough, and it keeps River out of the worst of the snow.

“Hey,” Nicole says, out loud, and River stretches out, her neck and tail impossibly long as she winds her head back and forth. She sends Nicole images of waking up, the stretch of dragon muscle, the feeling of cold morning air against the fire in her belly.

While River eats her morning liver, Nicole sends back pictures of the inside of the Homestead, decorated in twinkling lights. River seems interested, and Nicole makes a note to try to get her to one of the windows later. River’s too big to come inside now, and it’s been so cold and snowy, Nicole and Waverly haven’t been spending the time outside that they usually have.

Nicole strokes River’s scales, and then leaves her to her breakfast. 

Inside the Homestead, the fire in the stove has taken the chill off the air. Wynonna’s in the kitchen, clutching an enormous coffee mug to her chest.

“Bad dreams?” Nicole asks, and then winces when she remembers. A year ago. The Solstice. Wynonna’s got more reason than most to sleep badly, especially at this time of year. 

“More like weird dreams,” Wynonna says, wrinkling her nose. 

Nicole decides not to ask. She stoops down to pick up one of the Wise Men, who’s fallen to the floor from the Nativity scene on the table, and then goes to the fridge to figure out breakfast.

❄ ❄ ❄

December 23 is a long day at the Purgatory Sheriff’s office. Nicole’s on a swing shift. The Revenants are quiet — maybe remembering the death of Bobo, or maybe fighting among themselves at another winter Solstice without a willing Heir. But the regular non-demon Purgatory townsfolk are keeping the deputies busy. Nicole gets called out on a light complaint from someone living next to a man who refuses to turn off his laser-projector Christmas wonderland, and on a dispute over Christmas presents. There are reports of shoplifters at the Sip N’ Save, and kids setting off firecrackers out behind the high school.

When Nicole gets home, she’s beat. Waverly’s already asleep, and Wynonna looks like she’s out, too, sprawled across her couch with Calamity Jane sleeping next to her ankles in a tight ball of fur. 

Nicole reheats herself some of Waverly’s casserole, stopping the microwave before it can beep and wake Wynonna, and eats it standing up. She tumbles into bed, exhausted, too tired to do more than kiss Waverly’s hair and curl into the warmth of Waverly’s body under the quilt.

Nicole dreams, but she doesn’t remember much. Just a confusing jumble of light.

❄ ❄ ❄

When Waverly and Nicole get up Christmas Eve morning, Wynonna’s already made the coffee and headed out, probably on some Black Badge thing. Nicole feeds Calamity Jane and River and heads in to work, leaving Waverly home alone with the dragon and the cat.

At work, Nicole gets tagged with answering phones and taking requests from the public. Not normally her preference, but today, she’s tired, so tired her bones ache and she wonders if she’s coming down with something. _Perfect_ , she thinks, _just in time to ruin Waverly’s Best Christmas Ever_. 

When Wynonna and Dolls come through the station, Wynonna looks just as tired as Nicole does. Nicole nods at her and Wynonna quirks the corner of her mouth in a silent _sucks, doesn’t it?_. 

But then Nicole gets home. Waverly’s already there, curled up in one of the chairs and playing with Calamity Jane, who still thinks the end of Waverly’s braid is a cat toy.

“Hey,” Waverly says. She’s beautiful in the light from the tree, and when Nicole drops her uniform jacket and hat and comes over to her chair, she gets up and pulls Nicole down into a kiss.

Nicole’s _home_.

❄ ❄ ❄

Waverly’s Christmas Eve dinner is lobster bisque and oyster crackers and a cheese platter with three types of cheese, and a fancy salad with oranges and walnuts arranged on a frisee salad mix that she definitely had to drive into the big city to find — it’s not the type of thing that Purgatory’s grocery stores carry.

“Fancy,” Wynonna says, when she sits down, but Nicole notices that she doesn’t grab her bottle of whiskey like she normally would for dinner. 

“Something different,” Waverly says.

“Well, I think it is delectable,” Doc says. He’s got cream from the soup on his mustache. “A more delightful repast I have not had for a dog’s age.”

Wynonna smiles at that. “It’s pretty good, baby girl.”

“Pretty good?” Waverly draws herself up and pretends to take umbrage. “Pretty good? You’re not getting any food tomorrow if you think this is just _pretty good_.”

“Fine, it’s amazing,” Wynonna says. “Amazing. You’re the best sister ever. You are the Christmas Ninja, and we bow before you.”

“I know,” Waverly says, smiling. She picks up Wynonna’s salad plate and refills her soup plate before Wynonna can ask for seconds.

Dessert is chocolate mousse, which means Waverly definitely went into the big city for the pasteurized eggs. She bought River some liver, too — the special chicken livers River almost never gets, since she’s so much bigger than a chicken now. Waverly and Nicole take them to her while Wynonna and Doc do the dishes.

Outside, the stars are out, hanging so close in the impossibly black night that Nicole feels like she could reach out and pick them from the sky. Their breath catches in their throats from the cold.

It’s so beautiful at the Homestead, sometimes. They feed River her Christmas Eve dinner and Waverly strokes the dragon’s head while Nicole leans against them both.

❄ ❄ ❄

Nicole’s not sure what’s wrong when she first wakes up.

There’s a feeling — she tries to move, but she’s stuck in place. She concentrates, and realizes that she can’t feel her fingers, her toes — she can’t move, she can’t feel.

Swallowing down on her panic, Nicole tries to open her eyes. She can’t feel her eyelids, but there’s light, and suddenly she can see.

She wishes she couldn’t. She’s looking at the world from the perspective of the top of the kitchen table. She still can’t move, but she can see Wynonna’s form, dimly, asleep on the couch beyond the sparkling lights of the Christmas tree.

Around her are the other figures in the Nativity set.

There’s a bright light above them. Somehow, Nicole knows that it’s not the overhead light in the kitchen, the one that Waverly rescued from a garage sale and fixed up. It’s above them, beyond the house, and it’s growing brighter, ever so slowly. 

Growing brighter. Never ceasing.

The fact that she can’t feel her lungs doesn’t stop Nicole from feeling like she’s hyperventilating. Her vision goes spotty and she tries to calm down, tries to take a deep breath, only to realize she can’t.

She counts to ten, and then to thirty when that doesn’t calm her down. 

_I’m dreaming,_ Nicole thinks. She has to be. But she doesn’t feel like she’s dreaming, and when she looks at the newspaper Doc left on the table after supper, she can read the headlines. _You can’t read in dreams, right?_

She counts to ten again before she decides that this is real, or real enough. _Trapped in a Nativity set. Only in Purgatory._

When Nicole reaches out to River’s mind, the dragon is asleep, dreaming of flying over fields filled with tiny white flowers and swooping down on prey. Nicole doesn’t normally try to connect with River while she’s asleep. The dragon’s mind is a confusing place without River filtering for Nicole’s eyes — the dragon’s two-sided eyes aren’t a good match for human vision.

_River? River!_

Nicole has to think the dragon’s name a few more times before she rouses, groggily, and Nicole can feel her stretching against the straw in her lean-to. River sends her a sense of curiosity.

 _I’m trapped,_ Nicole thinks, and backs the useless human words up with an image of herself, trapped behind glass.

The dragon wakes quickly, and Nicole sends an image of Doc and a feeling of seeking.

River sends back images of herself, leaving the lean-to and nosing into the wide doors of the barn, but when she gets to Doc’s bed, he’s already asleep. She noses him, gently and then more vigorously, but he doesn’t stir.

Nicole reminds herself to take a deep breath, and then feels a jolt of panic when she can’t feel herself breathe. _Calm down, Haught._

River’s panic is growing, and Nicole takes a moment to send her calming thoughts before sending her an image of Waverly’s window. Waverly might be awake. Maybe. She went to bed with Nicole, but she kept tossing — she might not be asleep yet.

The bedroom window is shut tight, but whatever’s happened to Nicole, she can hear the dull thud of the dragon’s head against the glass.

River sends Nicole images of the darkness inside the window and Nicole sends her reassurance, tells her to keep going. The glass is cold under River’s scales as she tries to move the window, but it’s shut tight, thanks to Waverly’s do-it-herself energy audit earlier that winter. 

Finally — finally — Nicole can see a crack of light from under their bedroom door.

In River’s eyes, the window blooms with light, and then Waverly’s at the window.

“River?” Waverly rubs at her eyes. “What are you doing here, girl?”

She doesn’t open the window. Instead, she turns to Nicole’s body and shakes her shoulder.

“Nicole? Wake up — River’s here, something’s up.”

Through River’s eyes, through the window, Nicole watches as Waverly shakes her. By the tensing of Waverly’s shoulders, she knows the moment when Waverly realizes that something’s wrong. Waverly draws her breath in, and Nicole sees her look for a pulse, although she can’t feel Waverly’s fingers on her own neck.

 _She’s awake,_ Nicole reminds herself. Waverly’s awake and that means there’s hope.

From her vantage point on the kitchen table, Nicole watches while Waverly tries and fails to get Wynonna up. She takes Wynonna’s pulse, too, and lifts one of her eyelids to look at her eyes.

Waverly throws on her coat and hat, leaving her scarf askew in her hurry, and slams the door on her way out to the barn. River’s still looking in the window at Nicole’s sleeping body, so Nicole can’t tell what Waverly sees there — probably Doc, asleep too.

When Waverly gets in from the barn, she’s already on her cell phone.

“—sleeping,” she says. “Dolls, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

She pauses, and then hangs her scarf up on the hook. “No, they’re not.” Another pause. “Absolutely not. No — look, something’s definitely wrong!”

After Waverly hangs up the phone, she checks on Nicole and Wynonna again and then bundles up for the outdoors, properly this time, with her heavy boots and mittens and everything. Through River’s eyes, Nicole watches as Waverly checks on Doc again and then comes back to the main porch. She sits down in one of the chairs.

River follows her to the porch and sets her head down in Waverly’s lap. Waverly’s holding her cell phone in her mittened hand, staring down at it like it’s got answers that it’s not telling.

“I called Dolls,” Waverly says, to River. She strokes a mittened hand over River’s head. “He’s coming. He doesn’t know what’s going on any more than I do, but he’s coming.”

Waverly keeps stroking River’s head, while Nicole tries not to panic. The light from beyond the Homestead is getting brighter, searingly bright, and she can’t tell where it’s coming from. She just knows they can’t let it get there.

“I wish you could tell me what’s going on,” Waverly says to River. “You knew something was up, didn’t you?”

Nicole’s always wished that River could communicate with Waverly directly, but right now she’d give some non-vital organ to let the dragon tell Waverly what’s going on. 

Waverly’s cell phone lets out a beep. It sounds tinny to River’s ears.

“Midnight,” Waverly says. “It’s Christmas. Merry Christmas, I guess.” She leans down over the dragon’s head. “I just wish you could tell me what’s going on.”

River looks up at Waverly and Nicole’s brain starts _echoing_. It’s not really what’s happening but it’s the closest thing she can think of to describe the feeling — like somehow River’s connecting them.

 _The creche,_ Nicole thinks, frantically, trying to send the image of the little wooden figurines on the table in case the words can’t get through. In case River —

Through River’s eyes, Nicole sees Waverly sit up, suddenly. “The creche!”

Waverly pats River, quickly, and runs inside, slamming the door behind her. She stoops down beside the kitchen table and starts studying the wooden figurines, picking the up one by one, looking at the base and the markings and turning them over and over in her hands. When she gets to the Wise Man that has Nicole trapped, Nicole tries to force her awareness out into River’s eyesight to stop the feeling of dislocation when Waverly turns the figurine over.

❄ ❄ ❄

It feels like a lifetime to Nicole as she watches the growing light above them, but it’s only half an hour later when Dolls’ SUV skids to a stop in the gravel area outside the Earp homestead. Nicole sees his headlights through River’s eyes as the dragon goes to greet him.

Dolls rubs the dragon’s head uncertainly and then walks past her. Waverly comes bursting out of the Homestead, wooden figure in hand. (It’s the figure of Joseph, which Nicole can only be grateful for.)

“They’re trapped,” Waverly says. “I know it seems impossible but River told me. They’re trapped.”

“The dragon told you?”

“Just look at it,” Waverly says, impatiently, shoving the wooden figure into his hands. “It’s elder, isn’t it? And it’s been treated with something. I looked it up, and they used to use this for curses.”

Dolls studies the figure and hands it back to Waverly. “Maybe. I should check them out first, just in case it’s something else.”

“I know it’s this,” Waverly says, and Nicole wants to scream to them to _hurry up_ because her awareness of the great burning light above them is only growing. But Dolls insists on checking on Doc and Wynonna and Nicole, checking their pulse, scanning them with one of his Black Badge boxes and frowning at the readings.

“Okay,” he says, once he’s finished the readings on Nicole. “It’s definitely a curse.”

“I told you!” Waverly’s practically bouncing up and down. “Now can we break it?”

“There’s only a few ways to break this type of curse,” Dolls says. “Most of which we can’t get in Purgatory at 1 AM on Christmas Day.”

“Dragon fire,” Waverly says, triumphantly.

❄ ❄ ❄

They drag the fire pit out of the barn and set it in a circle of salt on fresh-fallen snow. Waverly carries the wooden figurines from the house, carefully, and arranges them on hay in the fire pit before stepping back.

“Okay, River,” she says. “Do your thing.”

The dragon looks at Waverly, uncertainly, but Nicole’s there, to send her an image of the fire pit with River’s cleansing, firey breath lighting the elderwood figures ablaze. _I just hope Waverly is right about this,_ Nicole thinks, as the dragon breathes in and Nicole sees the flame rushing towards them.

There’s a moment of suspension, when it feels like she’s bodiless, floating above the snow, and then Nicole’s awareness slams back into her body, and she draws an uneven breath.

The first thing she feels is the welcome rush of air into her lungs. The second thing is Waverly’s arms, tight around her, driving all the air back out again.

“I’m okay,” she gasps, into Waverly’s hair. “I’m okay.”

“Damn straight,” Waverly says, pulling back.

“Thanks to you and River.” Nicole pulls Waverly in for a kiss. “We’re okay.”

❄ ❄ ❄

Once Nicole, Wynonna, and Doc are all up and have allowed Dolls to run his medical equipment over them (with varying degrees of cooperation), Waverly brings out the pasteboard box and shows it to Dolls. He inspects the string and says it could be a delayed-action curse. “Probably intended to take out some earlier Heir,” he says.

Waverly burns the box and the string in the fire pit, just because, along with some other boxes from the house. “I’m not taking any more chances,” she announces.

“I always said you’d decorate us to death, baby girl,” Wynonna says.

“I just don’t understand why River was able to tell me what was going on.” Waverly pokes at another empty box. “I’ve tried to communicate with River before zillions of times and it never worked.”

Doc looks up from his whiskey. “Did this perchance occur just as the witching hour took hold?”

“Yeah,” Waverly says, looking over at Nicole. “It did.”

“There’s an old legend,” Doc says. “They used to say that animals could speak on Christmas Eve, just at midnight.” He clears his throat. “I went out to the barn at Christmas once, when I was a boy, to try to talk to the horses. It didn’t work then, but….”

“But this is Purgatory,” Wynonna says. “Weird shit happens here all the time.”

Nicole smiles. “They should make that the town slogan.”

“I’ve got cake,” Waverly says, looking up from the wreckage of all the boxes on the floor. “Dolls, you want some? It was for tomorrow. Well, today now. Christmas, I mean.”

 The cake is a spiral chocolate cake roll, frosted to look like a log, and Waverly serves each slice with a mushroom carefully sculpted out of meringue. She heats up cocoa over the wood stove, and serves Dolls and Nicole a mug each. Doc’s got his whiskey, and he pours out a glass for Wynonna, who’s staring up at the tree from her couch.

“There was a star,” she says, looking over at Nicole.

Nicole shivers. She still doesn’t know what that burning light was, but she’s glad she wasn’t the only one who felt it. Who knew that their time was limited.

“A star of doom,” Doc says. He looks out at the fire and shakes his head. 

“I think I’m going to give River some extra liver,” Nicole says. She gets up, stretching tight muscles and rejoicing in the feeling of her body, of having skin and muscles and being able to move herself through space. To be able to breathe. It’s not something she’s going to take for granted.

Outside, River’s staring into the fire in the fire pit.

“You saved us,” Nicole says. She sits down on a log next to River and strokes the dragon’s head, and scratches the place behind the dragon’s ear that gets itchy. “Best dragon ever.”

River sends back feelings of contentment, and then of sleepiness, and Nicole laughs and lets her tired dragon head off to her lean-to, and a well-deserved rest.

Back inside the Homestead, Dolls and Doc are arguing over whether werewolves are real (Dolls saying Black Badge has never seen one, but Doc arguing that this one time up in Silver City — anyway, it’s a discussion Nicole hopes they’ll have again when she’s awake enough to pay attention). Their cake plates are scraped clean.

Wynonna’s on the couch, staring dreamily up at the tree like she’s going to drift off to sleep. 

Nicole sits down next to Waverly, on the floor, and lets her head rest on her girlfriend’s shoulder. It’s Christmas, and they’re admiring the tree. It’s Christmas, and everything’s perfectly wonderful. The Christmas decorations didn’t kill them. It’s a wonderful time to be alive. 

“To Christmas in Purgatory,” Doc says. He lifts his whiskey and takes a large sip.

Nicole smiles and lifts her mug. To Christmas in Purgatory, and to Christmas with her family.


End file.
